The lamb in wolf's clothing
Frank Bodin takes third place in the 2000 Advertiser of the Year awards
Frank Bodin lands third place in the 2000 Advertiser of the Year electionBy Ernst WeberSince Frank Bodin joined the Geneva branch of the McCann-Erickson advertising agency as creative director in 1996, the agency has won award after award in national and international competitions. With this achievement, the former musician reached the third highest number of votes in the election of the Advertiser of the Year 2000.
"My ego does feel a bit bruised, but my nomination for Advertiser of the Year 2000 distinguishes the McCann-Erickson agency, Geneva, rather than me," says Frank Bodin, who doesn't see himself as much of a lone wolf or advertising as a stomping ground for misconceived heroism. The creation of good campaigns, he says, is a concerted effort. No CD can do everything, which is why you have an agency behind you. Only together can you be successful, says the 38-year-old.
Frank Bodin never wanted to end up in advertising. In 1989, however, he slipped into it, by chance and under the motto "What a Jean Etienne Aebi, an Andy Steiner or Reinhold Weber can do, a Frank Bodin has long been able to do." The then musician and law student had gained this impression at various scene parties and an ADC festival, to which he accompanied his girlfriend. From his artistic and university-elitist point of view, the advertising seemed primitive to him. But Bodin was a working student. As a stock market reporter, he earned not badly, but it was more lucrative to write copy for advertising.
When Frank Bodin put aside the scores and became a lyricist
Frank Bodin earned his first easy money with three ads he wrote on behalf of Edgar Iten for the Grand Hotel Viktoria Jungfrau in Interlaken. This first freelance work also earned him his first award from the Art Directors Club Switzerland (ADC), namely a bronze cube. The career changer then freelanced with Andy Steiner, the Advertising Man of the Year in 1988, who at the time was in charge of the IWC and LNN mandates, among others. From him, he learned to manage large volumes of work.
When Frank Bodin became the father of twins, he decided to put aside the scores in favor of a more secure existence and exchange the piano chair for a copywriter's chair that had become vacant at GGK, Küsnacht. He worked for Hermann Strittmatter for seven months, after which he accepted a vacant copywriting position at Aebi & Partner.
In this complex agency structure, he benefited from an experience he had gained at GGK "Strittis": namely, that you can live out your personality very radically, bring it to bear and also say no to a client once in a while. Making sacrifices for things you believe in "being a lamb in wolf's clothing" and analytical-tactical approach taught him Jean Etienne Aebi, his third coach. About his school Frank Bodin says with Bert Brecht: "Jean Etienne was a bad teacher, it was a good school."
Without discipline, the most brilliant idea is wasted effort
"No sooner have you managed a few nice campaigns at Aebi than you go to the advertising province to play the big CD," sneered more than a few colleagues when Frank Bodin turned his attention to Geneva. But he was convinced that "strong advertising can be created in Geneva just as well as in Zurich, São Paolo, New York or Bümpliz.
The correctness of his opinion was proven just three months later: by a first award given to the agency for a presentation it had designed for Elnapress.
Frank Bodin recognizes a brilliant idea, for example, when he is annoyed because it did not originate with him or when he can say, "I've never seen that before." The intensity of the aura of an implementation gives him further insight.
He also evaluates an idea rationally using a ten-point checklist and knowing that a good creation is usually about 10 percent intuition and about 90 percent transcription, that is, work.
"I learned discipline through music: when you sit down and start playing a piece, it requires one hundred percent concentration," says Frank Bodin, who was a member of the World Youth Orchestra and had performed with the Berlin Philharmonic, among others.
He also displays this one hundred percent concentration as a creative director when he thinks about a strategy or a concept. Although Frank Bodin has now been showered with over 200 national and international awards and it can be assumed that the shower of prizes will probably continue for a long time to come, he should not be counted among those advertisers who permenantly suffer from an overestimation of their own work and have to compensate for a lack of self-confidence with material goods. "We do an extremely modest job, we are merely service providers.
in the wheels of business," says last year's Cannes juror.
Switzerland can consider itself as
Advertising land profiling
As an eloquent ambassador for the Swiss advertising industry abroad, Frank Bodin vehemently advocates a concept for promoting the reputation of Swiss advertising culture as an international brand, which the local advertising industry should work out together.
In similarly small advertising countries such as Holland, Norway or Sweden, more agencies than in Switzerland operate consistently at an international level, says the creative director, who sometimes takes up his pen to express his opinion. Nevertheless, he says, Switzerland's location in the heart of Europe and its multilingual, multicultural setup put it in a very good position to develop pan-European and multinational campaigns.
"We don't need to hide our light under a bushel. Advertising doesn't look any worse here than elsewhere," says Frank Bodin, whose ads are admittedly a shining advertisement for Swiss advertising culture.
"My ego does feel a bit bruised, but my nomination for Advertiser of the Year 2000 distinguishes the McCann-Erickson agency, Geneva, rather than me," says Frank Bodin, who doesn't see himself as much of a lone wolf or advertising as a stomping ground for misconceived heroism. The creation of good campaigns, he says, is a concerted effort. No CD can do everything, which is why you have an agency behind you. Only together can you be successful, says the 38-year-old.
Frank Bodin never wanted to end up in advertising. In 1989, however, he slipped into it, by chance and under the motto "What a Jean Etienne Aebi, an Andy Steiner or Reinhold Weber can do, a Frank Bodin has long been able to do." The then musician and law student had gained this impression at various scene parties and an ADC festival, to which he accompanied his girlfriend. From his artistic and university-elitist point of view, the advertising seemed primitive to him. But Bodin was a working student. As a stock market reporter, he earned not badly, but it was more lucrative to write copy for advertising.
When Frank Bodin put aside the scores and became a lyricist
Frank Bodin earned his first easy money with three ads he wrote on behalf of Edgar Iten for the Grand Hotel Viktoria Jungfrau in Interlaken. This first freelance work also earned him his first award from the Art Directors Club Switzerland (ADC), namely a bronze cube. The career changer then freelanced with Andy Steiner, the Advertising Man of the Year in 1988, who at the time was in charge of the IWC and LNN mandates, among others. From him, he learned to manage large volumes of work.
When Frank Bodin became the father of twins, he decided to put aside the scores in favor of a more secure existence and exchange the piano chair for a copywriter's chair that had become vacant at GGK, Küsnacht. He worked for Hermann Strittmatter for seven months, after which he accepted a vacant copywriting position at Aebi & Partner.
In this complex agency structure, he benefited from an experience he had gained at GGK "Strittis": namely, that you can live out your personality very radically, bring it to bear and also say no to a client once in a while. Making sacrifices for things you believe in "being a lamb in wolf's clothing" and analytical-tactical approach taught him Jean Etienne Aebi, his third coach. About his school Frank Bodin says with Bert Brecht: "Jean Etienne was a bad teacher, it was a good school."
Without discipline, the most brilliant idea is wasted effort
"No sooner have you managed a few nice campaigns at Aebi than you go to the advertising province to play the big CD," sneered more than a few colleagues when Frank Bodin turned his attention to Geneva. But he was convinced that "strong advertising can be created in Geneva just as well as in Zurich, São Paolo, New York or Bümpliz.
The correctness of his opinion was proven just three months later: by a first award given to the agency for a presentation it had designed for Elnapress.
Frank Bodin recognizes a brilliant idea, for example, when he is annoyed because it did not originate with him or when he can say, "I've never seen that before." The intensity of the aura of an implementation gives him further insight.
He also evaluates an idea rationally using a ten-point checklist and knowing that a good creation is usually about 10 percent intuition and about 90 percent transcription, that is, work.
"I learned discipline through music: when you sit down and start playing a piece, it requires one hundred percent concentration," says Frank Bodin, who was a member of the World Youth Orchestra and had performed with the Berlin Philharmonic, among others.
He also displays this one hundred percent concentration as a creative director when he thinks about a strategy or a concept. Although Frank Bodin has now been showered with over 200 national and international awards and it can be assumed that the shower of prizes will probably continue for a long time to come, he should not be counted among those advertisers who permenantly suffer from an overestimation of their own work and have to compensate for a lack of self-confidence with material goods. "We do an extremely modest job, we are merely service providers.
in the wheels of business," says last year's Cannes juror.
Switzerland can consider itself as
Advertising land profiling
As an eloquent ambassador for the Swiss advertising industry abroad, Frank Bodin vehemently advocates a concept for promoting the reputation of Swiss advertising culture as an international brand, which the local advertising industry should work out together.
In similarly small advertising countries such as Holland, Norway or Sweden, more agencies than in Switzerland operate consistently at an international level, says the creative director, who sometimes takes up his pen to express his opinion. Nevertheless, he says, Switzerland's location in the heart of Europe and its multilingual, multicultural setup put it in a very good position to develop pan-European and multinational campaigns.
"We don't need to hide our light under a bushel. Advertising doesn't look any worse here than elsewhere," says Frank Bodin, whose ads are admittedly a shining advertisement for Swiss advertising culture.
